First Prize Competition Winners
“A highly functional project in a highly conceptual site”
In Creating our Concept, our main objective was to have one that is agreeable to live and work in, that will look balanced and complete at any stage it is decided to stop the project development, that will meet all the knowledge and Innovation Center requirements successfully, and most importantly that will respect and preserve the work of Oscar Niemeyer without jeopardizing its chances in making it to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
To fully meet the above, we opted for an architecture that is fully embedded and underground. This approach creates no conflict with Oscar Niemeyer volumes, has less visual concrete and more green spaces (around 90% of the allocated space), and finally is more energy saving. Keeping in mind that this was the more difficult option, far more challenging for us to conceive and have all the requirements successfully met.
Also, it is interesting for us to note that our mass plan composition was conceived by following the directive lines generated by the existing Oscar Niemeyer volumes on site which makes our project fully integrated with its surroundings. In addition, the interior was designed in a modular way rendering it highly flexible to the needs of the end‐users.
